For a while, we’ve been talking about how an SBH game with nothing but zombies on one side would play out. About a month or so ago, we decided to do a trial game. With the rules as written, it would be near impossible to do anything reasonable. We noticed several issues, mainly with morale of the zombies but also with activation.

The biggest problem is logistical, though. It takes quite some time to roll activations for 38 zombies! To get around this, we agreed that all zombies more than a Medium range from an enemy could be batch-activated. I had one dice for each zombie, put them in a plastic container and rolled all of them in one go. I then assigned the successful activations to the zombies I wanted to move, alternating between the front ranks and the back ranks.

Another change we made was to the morale rules. A zombie witnessing a gruesome kill would have to succeed with ALL three morale dice to not be instantly destroyed. That simply wouldn’t work. One of the first kills was a gruesome kill, and it took out 10 zombies. We decided that for this scenario, all zombies would have to count as fearless. As we didn’t want to remove the effect of a gruesome kill completely, any zombies within a long range are “stunned” one turn for each failed die in the morale check. We played this game prior to the first Stillburg game, where we tried a different approach. Haven’t decided which to use in the long run.

Prior to the game, we also changed the stats line of the zombies. Instead of Q6, C4, Undead, Slow, Short Move at 8 points, we instead went with Q5, C2, Undead, Slow – still at 8 points.

All changes were made to emphasize on what we feel is the strongest point of zombies; numbers! With a higher Quality, Medium move and the batch activation rules we could make the zombie horde maneuverable but with a fairly low Combat.

So, on to the actual game. Here’s a summary of the scenario rules:
* Zombies count as having Fearless
* Zombies within movement range of an enemy model must be activated individually. All others can be batch activated; rolling 1D6 for every model, allocating half of the successful activations to the front rank and half to the back ranks.

The goal of the scenario was for the villagers to fend off all zombies. The zombies had no goal, other than to devour any and all brains on the board.

My warband consisted of 38 zombies, with stats as mentioned above. As I don’t own 38 zombies (yet), we had to settle for proxies on some.

This is an overview of the setup, prior to turn 1. As you can see, for this game we used only plastic pre-painted D&D miniatures. I’m working on building a collection of painted Citadel vintage miniatures but the D&D minis are great for one-offs!

The two first turns were fairly uneventful, I won initiative and went first with the undead. The villagers spent their turns positioning themselves while the undead horde shambled forward. A few pot-shots were taken by the archers, but they were very ineffective.

In turn three, the first casualty was suffered by the undead. The berserker scored a gruesome kill and almost a third of the zombie hord was stunned.

It looked like this would be a walk in the park for the defending villagers, who got cocky and took on a more offensive role than I had anticipated. Slowly, the undead wittled away. The occassional scare occurred, when the undead managed to attack and a villager fell – but they survived and could recover and fight on.

In a series of unfortunate events, it all turned though. With two unlucky and early turn overs for the villagers, the undead could advance en masse. They gathered around their victims and the first casualties were a reality. A poor drunkard had been completely surrounded by the walking dead, and suffered horrible (but not quite gruesome) death. However, when the thief fell and the flesh eating abominations descended on him, the majority of the villagers retreated.

At this point two villagers had perished, while only fourteen zombies remained! The berserker (the town’s resident torturer – no village should be without one!) was fallen and surrounded and would most certainly be devoured in the following turn. Unfortunately, we had to end the game at this point due to real life commitments (curses!) but such a great time was had that we’ll replay it (with some changes) as part of the Stillburg campaign. We’re also planning to do a Mutants and Death Ray Guns variant of it – if we ever get around to that system and setting.

So – any Jerry Springer-like conclusions? Archers are ineffective against undead. Savage on the other hand is very effective, even more so when it stuns everything within a long distance. The game was defenitely not close – I’m sure the villagers would’ve been able to fend off the undead. The question is at what price. The stunned change to the undead worked very, very well! As I had one die for each undead model, I just picked a die from my dice bin and put it next to the stunned model as a marker. When a zombie was destroyed, I removed a die from the bin. The batch activation worked ok, but the rules for it are too fuzzy would break if any of the players is a rules lawyer or power game. Please let me know if you have any better idea on how to handle it, there’s an excellent comments functionality that no-one but Paul is using! =)

CAMPAIGN BACKGROUNDIn The Riding, a small backwater province in The Old World, lies a small town named Stillburg. Situated north of Averridge and surrounded by dark forests, life has never been easy nor much fun in Stillburg. Recently, this has taken a turn for the worse. Livestock have been found mutilated and torn asunder, and several supply convoys from the south have gone missing.

At first people blamed the wolves in the region, and wanted to organize a hunt. However, when a full pack of wolves was found torn to pieces the towns-folk started to get scared. Nobody talked about organizing any hunts after that. Instead, fortifications were made on the town borders and mercenaries were recruited to bolster the town’s small militia.

Among these mercenaries, we find Raab the Barbarian and his old friend and partner Aldor Berlepsch.

SCENARIO 1 – Stirrings in the burial groundsA few uneventful days after their enlistment, Raab and Aldor were spending the afternoon listening to yet another speech by the mayor. A sudden commotion in the north end of the square brought a premature (and appreciated) end to the speech. It was old farmer Crabcock, screaming at the top of his lungs that ”they got him”.

The mayor and a cleric from the priory of Gadd rushed to the old man’s side, and after a short but lively discussion mayor Boismann once again addressed the crowd. The farmer’s son had been assaulted and dragged off by walking corpses, into the woods to the north west of town. The mayor, seeing an opportunity to raise the generally low opinion of him and his bravery, proclaimed that he and the cleric would venture out to recover the young farmboy. At their side, they have three men from the militia and a heavily armed paladin of Gadd. They could however use some help…

Aldor and Raab decide to join, to make some quick coin and then get on with their travels north to Norsca where they plan to rejoin Raab’s brethren. How dangerous can a few reanimated skeletons be?

Setup
Woods and stone mounds, with one or two village houses near one corner of the board. The heroes are deployed within a short distance from the buildings. On the diagonally opposite quarter of the table, the (still living) body of Billy Crabcock is placed. The undead are deployed within a medium radius around him.

Objectives
Reach Billy Crabcock with any character before he bleeds out (6 turns). (+2/-2 VP)
Slay the undead. (+1 VP for each 100 points)
Keep mayor Boismann alive. (+1/-1 VP)

The heroes win initiative and activate first. They all move up the centre, with Raab and Aldor on point and the mayor with militia bravely protecting the rear. The undead breaks up in two groups; one larger group advancing towards the heroes while a small group of two skeletons and the three zombies advance on the right flank in cover of the woods. The three skeleton archers each take a shot at Raab, but at three times the distance it has no effect.

Aldor and Raab then move into the woods on the right flank, while brother Wendel and Duncan enters the woods on the left flank. The mayor, in a rare display of bravado, moves up the centre with only one militiaman as a shield to act as bait. All but one skeleton move up and form a line in front of the skeleton archers. All three archers shoot at Sven, the closest militia man, who falls on the last (aimed) shot. On the right flank, the zombies and two skeletons slowly advance.

Sven recovers from the archers’ attack and stands up. Aldor is running unhindered through the woods with the goal to reach Billy as quick as possible. In a coordinated ambush the heroes break cover from the woods and attack! Duncan and brother Wendel leap out of the woods on the left side and attack two skeletons. Duncan manage to hit, but his opponent is only pushed back. Wendel on the other hand, scores a solid hit and destroys the vile skeleton with divine aid. In blind frenzy, Raab rushes out from the woods on the right, straight into a surrounding circle of skeletons with no actions left for attacks. The militia moves up to shield the mayor, who fires with his pistol over their shoulders but miss.

The trailing skeleton rushes up past Duncan to attack brother Wendel, but the attack is parried with ease and the cleric repays the attacker with a crushing (and quite holy) blow to the skull. Two skeletons near Raab gather around him and the barbarian realize his folly. Outnumbered three to one, a fourth skeleton moves in and with a precise blow the mighty barbarian is overpowered and falls. A fifth skeleton approaches the fallen warrior and finishes him off. The archers fire at brother Wendel, who falls when dodging the fussilade.
On the right flank, the skeletons rush through the woods while the zombies continue circling around it.

The militia men move in and engage the archer skeletons, with no effect. Brother Wendel stands up and attacks one of the archers, but loses his balance and stumbles back. Duncan does a powerful attack on one of the skeleton warriors and scores a gruesome kill. The three skeleton warriors in range are transfixed, while the three archers are unaffected. Aldor emerge from the woods to ambush the rear skeleton archer, who is killed. The mayor fails to activate.

One of the skeleton warriors shrugs off the transfix, and moves to engage Aldor. The two remaining archers take turns attacking Sven, the militiaman. The first attack brings him to his knees and the other archer finish him off. One of the skeletons in the right flank woods run out ambushing mayor Boismann, who is pushed back but otherwise unharmed by the assault.

Bo attacks a skeleton archer and pushes it towards Duncan, who finishes the archer off with a powerful attack. Hans moves into contact with one of the transfixed skeletons while brother Wendel rushes to aid Billy but doesn’t quite reach him. In an unusual display of bravery, mayor Boismann moves to assist Aldor in the fight with a skeleton warrior. The ranger fails his attack and is pushed back by the foul undead.

Another skeleton warrior recovers from the transfix, while the two farthest skeletons move in behind Hans and Bo. The archer does a powerful attack on Bo and scores a gruesome kill. Seeing his last comrade fall, Hans flees. Duncan stands alone, facing five skeletons! The skeleton warrior engaged with the mayor activates with three dice, causing a turn over but one action is available. The mayor is attacked and falls.

Brother Wendel reaches Billy in the nick of time and is able to stop the bleeding on the young man. Mayor Boismann recovers from the attack, and with Boismann’s aid Aldor rushes the skeleton only to once again push it back. Duncan charges the same skeleton warrior, who is very resilient and is only pushed back. Hans recovers from routing.
The remaining skeleton archer fires an arrow at the mayor, who suffers a gruesome death. Covered in the mayor’s brains, Aldor flees. While Hans and Duncan stand firm, brother Wendel decides he’s done his part of the deal in rescuing the boy and flees. Two skeleton warriors move in on Duncan, and one engages Hans. The transfixed skeleton causes a turn over when trying to activate.
Wendel flees off the board, but Aldor recovers. Duncan attacks a skeleton but is pushed back himself. At this point, the heroes decide they’ve gotten what they came for and quickly leave the battle field together with the severely wounded Raab and a very pale farmer boy.
The mayor’s body is left to an horrible end in the fields, where the zombies feast on his carccass before returning into the woods.

Back in town, the healers can do nothing for Raab who dies an agonizing death. Aldor is devastated, but swears to avenge his friend. He will forever hate undead, and will not rest until he finds the person or persons responsible for bringing the dead back to life. Also, there might just be a small chance for him to revive his lost friend…

I’ve been ill with a cold for the last week or so, hence the complete and utter lack of updates on my Song of Blades game more than a week ago. Now I’m recovering though and tomorrow I’m heading back to work. This will be celebrated by a report of my less than stellar performance in…

Pyramid Campaign – Scenario 3Miss Catherine and her band of warriors have now acquired the old talisman they need to access the riches hidden in the pyramid of Sankar. They reach their final destination at dawn, and with their blades at the ready emerge into the clearing in which the pyramid is located. Automated metal guardians stir to life as ancient seals of warding are broken by the talisman’s presence.

Scenario specific rules: The pyramid is located in the centre of the battle field. The defender (that’s me, playing the guardians of Sankar’s pyramid) deploys his forces either in base contact with the pyramid or on the first level of the pyramid’s steps. The attacker then assigns the values 2,3,4 and 5 to each table edge and rolls a D6 to determine which side he’s deploying on: 1; Defender’s choice, 2-5; the assigned side, 6; Attacker’s choice.As you can see above, Fredrik deployed miss Catherine and her trusty companions on the “western” edge, while my automaton guardians are spread around the pyramid.

The goal of the attacker is to reach the top tier of the pyramid with the talisman bearer (assigned pre-game) and spend 3 actions in one turn with that character to activate the powers of the talisman. The objective of the defenders is simply to stop the attackers from reaching their win condition.

I started with initiative, and managed to move my guys around a bit before failing two activations. As always, click the image below for a larger version.

Fredrik’s first turn was a bit more eventful, as he managed to move forward and Blink took a shot at my Magic-user which actually got him to fall.

Turn two was very inactive for both. I moved one of my sneaks, and then when I actived my magic user with two dice to stand him up I failed both! Fredrik was even worse off though, and failed with two on his first activation (Creed, the berserker).

I then had a pretty decent turn, as I activated all of my characters. I tried positioning defensively around the first tier on the pyramid as that would give my guys some bonus. I put the hammerers (tough but slow) as some sort of bait on the ground.

Fredrik’s troops were not late to go for the hammerers. First his magic user Summer attempted to transfix my Golem, which failed as I passed the two-dice Quality test. Blink missed an aimed shot at the nearest hammerer and then Tora and Creed moved up on it, failing to cause any damage though.

I started my next turn with a successful transfix of Creed. With a golden opportunity, my fighter failed to activate and the turn passed to Fredrik. Fredrik broke the transfix on Creed and went on to take out my hammerer but failed to do much else.

I tried to respond in force. My golem moved down from the ledge and attacked Tora, the dwarf warrior. She was merely pushed back though. My magic-user attempted to transfix Creed, which also failed. My other characters moved about a little, and then I did the mistake which would cost me the game. My champion moved forward and attacked Creed, but failed and was pushed back. One of my sneaks tried to squeeze in and attacked Creed too, but failed and fell!

Creed smashed the sneak to smithereens with a powerful attack, and Summer transfixed my champion. Tora rushed forward and aimed a powerful attack at my champion, but I lucked out and we rolled a draw! Blink took an aimed shot at my fighter, but missed. Catherine and Ana-Marie had not been participating in the battle so far, but now Catherine moved up while Ana-Marie stayed at the edge of a woods section (not in the image).

My champion managed to break the transfix spell, and boosted by this I decided to gamble on my golem. I activated with three dice and all succeeded! He dashed forward, and attacked Fredrik’s leader Catherine with a powerful attack… which resulted in a push-back of Catherine! =( My magic-user then attempted to transfix Catherine, but failed to activate.

Summer started Fredrik’s sixth turn by transfixing my champion. Tora, who was in base contact already did a powerful attack but once again I lucked out and rolled a draw! I was all out of luck though, as Creed circled around and with the assistance of Tora managed to kill my champion. All 5 of my remaining models failed their morale tests with at least one dice, and none of them could flee towards the nearest table edge without passing any enemies within a short distance. They were all wiped out and Catherine’s gang could without suffering a single casualty pillage the treasury of the pyramid!

I was pretty let down by this abrupt end, and so was Fredrik. I did make a misstake when I moved my champion to the front-lines, I admit that. We still don’t think the ending was fair – or more importantly; it wasn’t fun! The main problem here was the way my remaining models were forced to flee into the arms of the enemies.

In conclusion, a neat little campaign – with a surprisingly abrupt ending. A pity that, especially as I had built the pyramid especially for this scenario and painted a few D&D Warforged for the occasion!

Coming up; I’ll post a short tutorial on how I did the pyramid. Also, a close-up on the painted Automatons!

The best laid plans of mice and men often go awry. In this scenario, it was the plans of my men… I’m sure I’ll post about mice plans going awry as well some day.

Pyramid Campaign – Scenario 2.The last episode ended with Hawkins and his men gaining both pieces of the talisman. On their way to the ancient pyramid where king Sankar is buried, they’re ambushed by a band of troglodytes. What Hawkins doesn’t know is that the troglodytes have been employed by his surviving enemies from the last battle; miss Catherine and her warriors. If Hawkins can guide his party safely to the other side of the board and exit with the talisman still in his possession, they should be able to lose the troglodytes in the dense forests. Then it’s only a matter of a few days of travel until they reach the pyramid of Sankar.

Scenario specific rules: The defender (Fredrik, controlling the troglodytes) sets up the terrain and then positions his troglodytes anywhere within his half of the board, with atleast a medium distance space between any troglodytes. The attacker (me, controlling Hawkins warband) sets up with normal rules and have to exit with my leader (who is holding the talisman) on the other side of the board.

I decided I would try to go through the woods on my left flank, staying in cover of the center woods as long as possible. With the new addition of a minotaur warrior named Bull, I felt invincible. This turned out to be a poor assumption…

Llandau (elf rogue) and Tibor (human warrior) charged into the center woods, where they clashed with a kobold archer and a troglodyte bonecrusher. Just outside the woods stood a troglodyte brute and the troglodyte captain.

At the same time, Husk (half-orc hero) and Khwair (dwarf warrior) advanced between the two woods sections, where Husk ended up falling in a battle with a troglodyte barbarian near the left woods.

Bull had joined Tibor and Llandau in the center woods, but was very unlucky with his attack on the bonecrushed merely managing a push-back.

Fredrik managed to take out Husk with one of his two troglodyte brutes, while I still hadn’t managed to kill more than a lousy kobold archer.

I moved my guys out of the woods hoping to do some quick tag-team damage to a few of the stronger troglodytes.

Fredrik pushed me back though, and after a few turns Hawkins (my human leader) was locked in combat with a troglodyte barbarian (lethal to humans!) and a troglodyte brute. Luckily, I managed to take the brute down. Looking back at the pictures, I don’t understand why – but at this point I decided to make a dash for the objective instead of fighting and I ran off whith Hawkins and Tibor, who went out on the left flank and around the left woods section. I had no enemies between Hawkins and the table edge and really did think I could make it.

Unfortunately that was not the case. Fredrik had more luck with activations than I and soon Hawkins fell.

We continued to trade blows for a while, but my warband was soon wiped out and Fredriks troglodytes could return the talisman to miss Catherine. With a rested and refitted warband, she will be the one to approach the pyramid of Sankar in the next scenario.

My warband survived though – except for Bull, who was torn to pieces and feasted upon by the savage troglodytes. Who knows when they will show up again?

I had a day off work today, and my regular gaming buddy (and cousin, to boot) Fredrik came by for a day of gaming. I had worked out a small Song of Blades & Heroes campaign for us to tackle consisting of three linked scenarios.

Pyramid Campaign – Scenario 1.
Two warring adventurer bands have acquired one half each of a magical talisman. The complete talisman is needed to unlock the secrets of an ancient pyramid, buried deep in the remote forests. Neither band is prepaired to share the certain riches to be found, thus they meet for a final show down. The winner walks away with both pieces of the talisman and can gain access to the pyramid when they reach it.

The scenario rules were quite simple. The leader of each warband have one half of the talisman. To win, a warband has to posess both talisman pieces when exiting their entry point. The entry points are a “long” section on the centre of each player’s table edge. Talisman pieces are dropped when the carrier is removed from play and any non-animal character can pick them up by spending one action when adjacent to it.

After setting up the table, we diced for initiative. I won, and advanced up the middle in a fairly fanned out formation. In retrospect I should’ve had Llandau (my elf rogue with sneak) on the right flank instead of the left, and tried to sneak up to the forests on my far right flank.

Fredrik’s forces moved up to the centre field, leaving only the elf archer Blink in the back, at the edge of the woods on my far right flank.

The next round, I made my first mistake. Lasek (my human witch hunter) advanced to the middle of the board and took a shot at Creed (Fredrik’s human berserker). Lasek missed his shot, and all my other activations failed. Fredrik’s Creed and Tora (dwarf warrior) closed on poor Lasek and disposed of him the next turn, while following with most of his other warriors. The grim reaper below indicates poor Llandau’s position.

I tried counter assaulting and flanking his magic-user Summer with an ambush attack from Llandau, but failed. Llandau fell and was killed the following turn by Creed.

At this point, I had a feeling I would lose the game. So far, I had not managed to take any of my opponent characters out, while I had lost almost a third of my points values in the form of two characters.

My first break came when Fredrik advanced with Tora and failed activating any other characters. I attacked her with Khwair and Husk, who managed to bring her down. Tibor moved in for the kill, abandoning the assault on Blink who had camped out in the woods stand but ran out of arrows.

Fredrik tried to move around my left, attempting to get at my leader while I wheeled around to the right trying to do the same. I did a lame attempt at attacking with Kiruk, but he was quickly slain. Fredrik then advanced towards my hero Husk and disposed of him too. At this point, I was about ready to throw in the towel.

After this, things kind of went bananas. After a failed attempt where Fredrik assaulted Tibor (my human warrior), I managed to turn the tables. Tibor killed Darkhölme (who had been very passive the whole game).

Hawkins and Khwair came to Tibor’s assistance and together they brought down Creed. Fredrik countered by taking out Khwair who had been transfixed by Summer.

Free to move, with no adjacent enemies, my two remaining warriors attacked and took out Summer. This sent the three remaining characters in Fredrik’s warband fleeing.

The remaining melee was a bit long winded. We traded blows back and forth, wittling away the numbers on each side. Finally, only my leader Hawkins and Fredrik’s leader Catherine and her companion Blink were still on the battlefield. Things looked grim for Hawkins, but with determination and a hefty portion of luck he managed to turn the tables. From total despair a few turns earlier, he was the last man standing and could head home with the two talisman pieces!

All my characters recovered fully from their injuries, except Kiruk who went on to the next battle with a temporary decrease to his Quality attribute.

I’ll continue tomorrow with a (shorter!) write-up on the second scenario, where Hawkin’s brave band is waylaid by a foul band of troglodytes.